Description:
There's a new instructional hitting the streets called Waketrix. This movie reveals the “true movement” of wakeboarding technique. Even all you so-called “advanced” riders will benefit from the foundation drills.

Approved by the top Wakeboarding Associations and Wakeboard Camps, Waketrix is truly the professional wakeboard coaching tool. It’s the most comprehensive easy-to-use instructional, plus it features some new training and fundamental trick drills that are revealed for the first time. Waketrix has the coaching secrets and tips that have helped the pros get where they are today. So, quit lying about how good you are and learn something new.

There can never be too many wakeboarding instructional videos. For most people, wakeboarding is a difficult sport, and finding good coaching is hard to do unless you live near a wakeboard camp. Therefore, the more instructional videos we can get out there with a wide variety of coaches helps people excel at the sport.

The latest wakeboarding instructional DVD to hit the market is Waketrix. How does it stack up?

Concept

The primary concept of Waketrix is to be a detailed instructional video focusing on the basics and intermediate skills of wakeboarding. There isn't much free riding mixed in, and they take the basic concept a bit further with the DVD format by allowing you to click "Enter" on your DVD remote to get more detailed instructions about the trick.

Riders in Waketrix include:

Darin Shapiro

Dallas Friday

Danny Harf

Loren Levine

Cobe Mickacich

John Nadolski

Josh Sanders

Zane Schwenk

Chad Sharpe

Jeff Solei

Daniel Watkins

Cinematography

The entire video was shot on location at Shapiro's Ride the Spot wakeboard camp on Lake Mary Jane in Orlando, FL. So, the scenery isn't terribly exciting being a standard Florida lake, but each trick is shown in multiple angles with a good focus on the rider.

It's safe to say it isn't exciting cinematography, but it definitely gets the job done well when the focus is on instructional content.

Length

Waketrix is over an hour long with no "off the water" footage. It's entirely devoted to teaching you how to wakeboard.

Music

The music in Waketrix is mostly instrumental, and is an original soundtrack featuring:

DJ Ethos

Darin Shapiro

DJ 3RDI

Ezra G

Circle of Chaos

Josh Marcy

Instructional Content

Waketrix breaks down each trick into three sections.

Fundamentals - What tricks do you need to know or skills do you need to have before attempting this trick?

Mechanics - What is your body position like on approach for this trick? What type of edge do you use? How do you pop off the wake? What do you do with the rope? How do you start the rotation?

Progression - What can you add to this trick for style? How can you do it differently? What advanced tricks can you learn from it?

This format makes it easy to think about the trick in the correct ways.

At any time during the trick, you can press "Enter" to get even more details on performing the trick from expert coach Mike Ferraro. Ferraro has coached Darin Shapiro and Dallas Friday, among many other riders.

Waketrix only focuses on beginner and intermediate tricks. This gives it a lot of time to spend on each trick covered. The full list of tricks are:
Getting Up

Board Control

Cut Back Drill

No Air Wake Cross

Ollie

Hop In, Hop Out

Riding Switch

Surface 180

Boardslide/Lipslide

Ollie 180

Heelside Wake Jump

Toeside Wake Jump

Grabs

TS/FS 180

HS/FS 180

TS/FS 360

HS/FS 360

Backside 180

Back Roll

Roll to Revert

TS Back Roll

TS Back Roll to Revert

Front Roll

Scarecrow

Tantrum

Raley

The tricks are performed well, and the drills at the beginning are something I hadn't seen mentioned much in other videos. It's a mistake for riders to go from getting up right to wake jumping, but that's what most people try to do without proper instruction. They'd be much better off following the advice of Waketrix.

Bonus Features

The bonus features on the Waketrix DVD include:

A look at the Ride the Spot Camp

Driving Instruction

The Trixionary

Sidewayz Trailers for other videos

A section of bonus footage

Overall

The downside of Waketrix is that it stops at 360s and basic inverts and doesn't provide much of anything for higher level intermediate and advanced riders. It also doesn't contain much freeriding footage, so it's not the type of video to pump you up to ride.

However, I was impressed with the technical detail and focus on fundamentals in Waketrix. The extra time for each trick really allows for a lot of detail and many examples of the trick to be shown. It's definitely a great learning tool for those who are just starting wakeboarding or learning to do basic spins and inverts.